For a long time, beeswax was has been in common usage as a natural wax for candles. Over one hundred years ago, paraffin came into existence, in parallel with the development of the petroleum refining industry. Paraffin is produced from the residue leftover from refining gasoline and motor oils. Paraffin was introduced as a bountiful and low cost alternative to beeswax, which had become more and more costly and in more and more scarce supply.
Today, paraffin is the primary industrial wax used to produce candles. Conventional candles produced from a paraffin wax material typically emit a smoke and can produce a bad smell when burning. In addition, a small amount of particles (“particulates”) can be produced when the candle burns. These particles may affect the health of a human when breathed in.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have other materials which can be used to form clean burning base wax for forming candles. If possible, such materials would preferably be biodegradable and be derived from renewable raw materials. The candle base wax es should preferably have physical characteristics, e.g., in terms of melting point, hardness and/or malleability, that permit the material to be readily formed into candles having a pleasing appearance and/or feel to the touch, as well as having desirable olfactory properties.
Additionally, there are several types of candles, including taper, votive, pillar, container candles and the like, each of which places its own unique requirements on the wax used in the candle. For example, container candles, where the wax and wick are held in a container, typically glass, metal or the like, require lower melting points, specific burning characteristics such as wider melt pools, and should desirably adhere to the container walls. The melted wax should preferably retain a consistent appearance upon resolidification.
In the past, attempts to formulate candle waxes from vegetable oil-based materials have often suffered from a variety of problems. For example, relative to paraffin-based candles, vegetable oil-based candles have been reported to exhibit one or more disadvantages such as cracking, air pocket formation, and a natural product odor associated with soybean materials. Various soybean-based waxes have also been reported to suffer performance problems relating to optimum flame size, effective wax and wick performance matching for an even burn, maximum burning time, product color integration and/or product shelf life. In order to achieve the aesthetic and functional product surface and quality sought by consumers of candles, it would be advantageous to develop new vegetable oil-based waxes that overcome as many of these deficiencies as possible.